Oceans Rise
by blackhorseandthecherrytree
Summary: Padme lives.
1. In Which Tragedy Is Not An End

Chapter 1: In Which Tragedy Is Not an End But a Beginning

* * *

Padme wakes on a medical shell in a metal room with a metal droid on the other side of the room making whistling noises that she recognizes as an old comfort pattern. She is unreasonably calm. For this moment, she is entirely disoriented. Her stomach is flatter than it should be. She is not in her apartment on Coruscant. This room is blank and ugly and sterile. Behind her mask of manners, it makes her cringe in the bottom of her decorous Naboo soul.

She feels her stomach, empty of child, and then she - she remembers. Giving birth in this cold room. Twins. She was going to surprise Anakin. She named them, Luke and Leia, one for her and one for him. She was going to surprise her husband. But he's turned into somebody she can't recognize - gone down a path she can't follow. He choked her. That's when she knew she'd lost him. Her Ani would never have done that to her.

Carefully, Padme feels the rest of her body. There wasn't any pain, which means she was probably on heavy medication for the childbirth. There was a cast around her throat - probably why she was still alive. She closes her eyes, then opens them, and tries to take small breaths. Deeper ones. Concentrate, she tells herself. Don't fall apart. She tries to move her leg, and manages about a meter off the table before letting it fall back down. Her spinal cord is fine. Her legs and arms are fine.

She closes her eyes again, letting herself cry a little. It's not that she's ashamed of crying; it's just that she wants to see her babies first. She doesn't want the first time they see her to be full of tears. They deserve a mom who can smile and not be overwhelmed by grief.

Padme decides she can work on that later as the medical droid scuttles around, calling her Patient 187. Her two babies are nearby, in specialized neonatal units. It reassures her that they're as healthy as twin premature babies can be. It also tells her that Bail, Obi-wan and Yoda are nearby, if she's ready to talk to them. It means to be comforting.

If she can't have her mother, she supposes three men were the next best thing, so she gives the droid the go ahead. It shuffles off with an aura of disappointment, and Padme feels a little bad for being so curt. But the fact that she can speak at all is incredible, so. Small steps. Her great-grandmother hadn't talked for three weeks after losing her wife. It can check her over later.

She wasn't sure of what to anticipate. She'd hoped - she'd hoped that Anakin would have this conversation with the Jedi, while she supported him. But she has nothing to be ashamed of, here. All they had between them was love, and the expression of it. She'd always thought that Obi-wan had quietly condoned them. It wasn't as if their relationship had been some big secret. It wasn't as if either of them had been trying too hard to hide.

Maybe she'd hoped, a little, that something would come up and Anakin wouldn't be able to pretend anymore, and then he'd see that what he'd been avoiding hadn't been something to be fear after all. The realization hits her then, just like that - maybe his fear was greater than his love.

She tucks that thought away as Bail, Yoda, and Obi-wan come in, looking like they haven't slept in ages. Obi-wan's eyes are more tender than she's comfortable with seeing, more attached than a good Jedi should be. "How do you feel?" he asks.

"Like I just gave birth to twins after my husband turned to the Dark Side," she says, because she doesn't have the patience to wander around the coils of this conversation. She feels her focus ebbing, a little, as she watches Yoda hop up to one of the other beds. "Can you raise my bed, please?" She doesn't trust her arms to function the way she wants them to yet, and she wants to be at equal eye level with them.

Obi-wan obliges her while Yoda sits. "How long have you been married?" Yoda asks, because of course he does.

"Since the beginning of the Clone Wars." Their six-year anniversary is coming up. Was coming up. "Is Anakin alive?" Padme can't pretend to be anything but concerned. He's her husband. She's allowed to care.

Obi-wan and Yoda look at each other. "I left him on Mustafar," Obi-wan says, picking his words carefully. Padme's nerf-shit sensors ping. "It would have been very difficult for him to survive. Padme, I don't think he's Anakin anymore. Anakin would never have done this."

Yoda shuffles in his seat. Padme looks from Obi-wan to him, and back, and she - she knows. "You left him." She thinks back. She'd been struggling to breathe, screaming any way she had, using everything she had. "You left him to save me."

The pain in Obi-wan's face is unbearable. She closes her eyes to shut it out like light. "Yes," he says. "I thought that the man Anakin had been would have preferred to die than to be what he had become."

But you couldn't make the killing blow, Padme thinks. And neither could I. She imagines the scene for one brief, startling moment, the way that it would be in a holovid: bright lava, dark against light, the screaming, the burning. As if she had been there herself. In that moment of selfishness, she's glad. There is a part of her that has the capacity for anger: for herself; for her children; for the Jedi Anakin called family that he betrayed.

"He was afraid," she says. Yoda lifts up his head and looks at her. "I didn't know he was doing this until it was done. But I know that he was afraid for me the way that he was afraid for his mother. He thought I was going to die in childbirth."

She looks down at herself. There is something grimly amusing about the fact that the reason she's still alive has nothing to do with him, if you were into cruel ironies. She - she should have known. She'd known what he'd done when his mother was threatened, even if she hadn't quite believed it. She hadn't engaged. She'd let time smooth it over, hoping it'd be fine. Clearly, it wasn't.

"Fear leads to anger," Yoda says. "Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It is the path to the Dark Side." He lets out a sigh. Dooku had been his apprentice, once upon a time; he had failed him. "This is why attachment is forbidden to the Jedi."

"Attachment is not what made Anakin afraid," Padme rasps out sharply. She has a good six years of words waiting to tumble out of her, and none of them will wait for her voice to clear. "Your inability to accept and understand him is what made him afraid. He was a slave, and you bought him, and you expected him to be a perfect Jedi under the threat that you would throw him out if he didn't comply.

"You bought him and expected him to cut off his mother as if he'd never known her. As if the fact that she was still living in slavery wouldn't affect him. As if knowing that she could be sold, raped, murdered, and beaten at a command shouldn't worry him or make him angry. When he brought up concerns you ignored him. When Ahsoka was under trial you abandoned her." Obi-wan flinches. Good. "These things aren't attachments, they're normal sentient relationships! It's not attachment to honor them! It's respect!"

Padme finds herself breathing heavily. She should have said this all earlier. Maybe she could have stopped these horrors by speaking her mind. She'd been afraid to lose her tenuous allies. But now here they were, at the end of the galaxy, and if words were all that were left to her she would use them. Bail was looking at her like he had never seen her before. She hadn't discussed Anakin with him. Maybe she should have. Should have, could have - all she had was the present. Padme gathers herself for one last burst through her still-wounded throat.

"It is legitimate to be angry at the cruelty of the galaxy. It is legitimate to fear for your loved ones. It is legitimate to hate evil. You don't achieve serenity by pretending that these emotions don't exist, or by believing that having them makes you a horrible sentient!" Where were her debate classes? Professor Xun would rake her over the coals for not finishing off with a symmetrical rebuttal. "Fear can lead to action. Anger can lead to clarity. Suffering can lead to compassion."

"You skipped hatred," Bail says mildly, but mostly to needle her.

Padme shoots a glare at him. Damn their years of joint speechwriting. "They gave me the good meds," she says. "Ugh. Hatred can lead to understanding? You've never hated anything so much you had to understand how it works?" It feels like a reach, but in this moment she believes in it with all of her still-functioning brain. Bail spreads his hands, still grinning, like the pest of an older brother he was. She feels suddenly deeply grateful for his presence. He could not be here without substantial risk to himself. At least, in the middle of all this, there's somebody familiar.

"Padme, you are a great light in the galaxy," Yoda says. "If you had died, at peace I would not be. Think on these things, I will." His wrinkled head seems deeper, somehow.

She feels her anger crumble, some. "That's all I can ask," she says. Stars above. "I know that Anakin has done terrible things. He killed all the younglings at the Temple." Saying it aloud made it real. Not her Anakin. But there it was, anyways. She couldn't say she loved him and not understand this about him - that he was capable of youngling murder when afraid and angry. That he was capable of youngling murder when it came to protecting her life.

"He called himself Darth Vader," Obi-wan says. "He's in the service of Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious. I don't know how long Sidious has been influencing him." Even his beard was sad - unclipped, ruffled, slept-on wrong. He hadn't been like this since Satine, Padme realizes with a start. "I should have seen the signs. I should have stopped this."

"My planet elected him as Senator for twenty years," she says. "I called for the no confidence vote in Chancellor Valorum as Queen on his suggestion. We were all fooled."

"Even those of us who should have known better, hmm," says Yoda. "Complacent, the Jedi were. Too trusting. Too presumptive. All of us, blind." He sounds tired, and old.

"And now he's Emperor," Bail adds. From his mouth it was like a curse. "An Emperor with an army of clones ready to turn on anyone at his command. There'll be peace, but at the price of a blaster at our heads."

What a way to live, Padme thinks. What a way to raise her children. More fear, anger, hatred, suffering. She longs, desperately, for her mother. She wants to hug her. She wants to cry. She wants to pretend for a little while that a universe where these things could happen wasn't the one she lived in.

But she was a mother now. She was the only parent Luke and Leia had. She had to be strong. "How long will it take me to heal?" she asks. Her throat hurts. She tabs the droid for water, and drinks gratefully.

"A few days, for the childbirth," Yoda says. "Longer, your throat will take. Neither Obi-wan or I have skill with healing, but what we can do, we will." He seems pensive. "No safe place for Jedi there now is. For you, the Senate is no haven. Not while Luke and Leia are with you."

Padme lets out a short laugh. "No," she says, "I don't think it is. And Naboo is too predictable." She misses home. It devastates her to think what Sidious might make of it. But it was too strategic; too important. She could hide with the Gungans, maybe, but for how long? She'd be noticeable. Naboo was no option for her and her children.

"It's a big decision," Bail says. "You don't have to make up your mind right away. This is far enough away from the Republic that they shouldn't be able to track us down. I'm going to have to return to Alderaan soon, though. I'll be missed." He had a planet to care about, too, and Breha deserved to have her husband with her as she tackled leading her homeworld in this catastrophe.

Yoda pauses. "This, you will not like to hear," he says. "But perhaps it is that your children will be safer away from you. Adoption-"

"No," Padme says, without thinking, without breathing. "So I could return to a Senate that has become entirely ineffectual? So Palpatine can mutter threats in my ear until I break and tell him where Luke and Leia are? He took Anakin. He's not getting my children." Besides, position wasn't the only way to be politically active. It wouldn't be the first time she'd used a pseudonym to publish papers. Or viruses to circulate them, for that matter.

Yoda nods briskly. "So it is, then." He did not seem relieved. But he respected her decision, for which she was grateful.

"I'll go wherever you go, Padme," Obi-wan says. She looks up at him, startled. "I owe it to Anakin. And as it stands, I have nowhere else to go."

All the Jedi were dead. Maybe some stragglers had survived, but not many, Padme knows. It would not be long until the rest were hunted down. She can follow these steps at least, even if her mind cannot fully contain the atrocities that she knows have happened. Her political acumen hasn't failed her that much.

"Thank you," she says. "You've always been a good friend." It would be nice to not have to do this alone. "Has anyone heard from Ahsoka? Last I heard, she was striking up in the bounty hunter business."

Obi-wan and Yoda exchange looks. Bail responds. "She hasn't made contact."

"Sabé might know," Padme says before yawning. "She was in charge of my black ops work. I asked her to pass on a few assignments." She feels so sleepy, suddenly. Childbirth, and the ensuing medications, would do that to you.

Yoda hops down from his table and pats her hand gently. "Rest," he says. "We will manage without you. Heal, you must."

Padme forces herself awake. "I want to see Luke and Leia." She could do this. "I just want to hold them." They were babies - they probably didn't care - but she wanted them to know that she cared. She wanted to see who she'd spent eight months carrying.

"Of course," Obi-wan says. He and Bail headed over to the neonatal units and returned quickly, each with a red-faced newborn.

The babies didn't have clothes. The station hadn't been prepped for that, and Padme hadn't prepared her spacecraft for an early delivery. But they had blankets, and that would have to be good enough for now. Padme thinks longingly of the baby clothes she'd bought and the nursery she'd designed on Coruscant in hope for a future that would now never be. Padme had been a politician whose biggest secret was a forbidden romance. She was an idealist, a fighter, and a lover. Who she would be now was anyone's guess, least of all her own. But what she was right now, in this moment, was a mother, like her mother before her.

She falls asleep like that, holding her babies, hoping beyond hope that they would have a future. It might not be what she'd grown up with - they might never be able to run for office on Naboo - they might never be Jedi - but if she kept fighting they might still have one. She had to try to make that possible for them. She had to make it so they would not live in fear. If she did that - maybe she could say that she had not failed entirely.


	2. Of Stars That Burn Too Fierce and Bright

Chapter 2: Of Stars That Burn Too Fierce and Bright

It takes all of three days for Padme to heal enough to start moving. There isn't time to wait it out. Frankly, she's sick of her bed by the time she's done. She has not gotten over the ugliness of this space station. It's irrational, but it feels strangely symbolic of the way her life has changed. In another life, she had looked over the hospital room where she planned to spend her labor and recovery, pre-ordering her favorite flowers and practicing her breathing exercises. Now that life is gone, a ghost in the wind between planets - or, more accurately, the changes in regime.

Bail leaves almost as soon as he knows Padme is going to survive; there are political agendas to attend to, speeches to make, people to contact, and a planet halfway to rebellion to calm. They cannot publicly revolt, that much is clear; with both the forces of the Separatists and what had been the Republic, no one can stand in the Empire's way and survive. Alderaan must kneel before they can grow strong.

He is with her on one of her first attempts at walking. "I cannot believe how he played us all so thoroughly against each other," she grunts out. Fury is one of the few things keeping her going for her own sake. "How long can he have been planning this? How long can a Sith lord even keep this kind of momentum?"

When she thinks about it for too long, she feels sick to her stomach. She trusted him. She set him up for this, as he set her up to set him up, and set up who knows how many other game pieces into motion. Her friends, her family. The man was willing to threaten his own home planet in order to rule the galaxy, and even being Chancellor wasn't enough for his ambition.

"You have as much information as I have," Bail says, which is true enough, and more than frustrating. The space station has access to the Holonet, but only basic. They get the propaganda. They don't get news, if news even exists anymore. "I'd have to go back to Coruscant in order to get more." And that's a frightening thought on its own merits, that the only way to get accurate information would be one-on-one and more hearsay than documentation.

Bail would probably have to put his very life in danger in the upcoming years - live a lie, play the pawn. Padme doesn't know what makes her more angry: that it's now effectively impossible for good politicians to do their job or that opposing Palpatine will put them all at risk for whatever he sees fit to do with them. She's never considered assassination as a legitimate political tactic before, but now she can hazily think of some benefits.

"You have to do what you have to do," Padme says, finally, turning around to go back to her bed. "We all will." Her stomach clenches up in fear of - the future, a galaxy suddenly in turmoil. Who she will have to become in order to survive. "Just stay safe, if you can. I've lost too many friends to this war to lose them to tyranny and terror."

"There is a saying on Alderaan for such times as these. 'Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it'." Bail strokes his chin, which he does when he wants to look wise. _Sar Notori Sperre_ , Padme thinks. _That's the author_. "It's a strange new galaxy, with strange new blooms. It'll be a change of pace to be the serpent, but at least I'll be among the roots, hmm? And maybe I'll have the chance to plant some seeds."

Bail is her friend for many reasons; one of them is his ability to drive a metaphor into the dirt. Another is his stalwart resilience and ability to persevere. "Let's hope so," Padme responds, and slides her recovering body back into bed, more exhausted than she wants to be. She has enough energy to smile at him. "We have to keep in touch. I have to leave my old life behind, and you have to stay safe, but we should be able to set up a code, or something." That that's her only security for not being tracked down is the opposite of comforting.

They make plans. The code is more of a persona. Padme will write as the roving sister of one of the janitors at the Alderaani palace. She can write the truth, but write it slant. So can he. It's not enough, but it's better than nothing. She can't - she can't give up everything. She was a queen. She will not lose herself.

Bail leaves with sadness in his step, Breha in his eyes. She envies him.

* * *

Yoda is not a particularly social or outgoing sentient. Padme supposes you don't get to eight hundred years of being a Jedi by being an extrovert. Still, he's kind, in his own way; and worrying, in his own way.

"Your children are strong with the force," he says. "But in different directions, mmm. They would make magnificent Jedi." He looks down at them from a nearby bed, and all Padme can do is wonder what he sees. By all rights, according to the Jedi Code they ought not exist, or at least not in the context that they do.

"Is that common among children with Jedi parents?" she asks. Yoda settles into a seated position, his small feet sticking out from under his robe, as if ready to teach.

"Sometimes," he says, "and sometimes...not. The Force chooses who it will. To be tamed, it refuses. Its whims we accept. Learning to read it, to dwell in it as it dwells in us, can take a whole lifetime." He sighs. He has not lived all of his yet, and he has seen too much.

Padme sits across from him and mirrors his posture, more to prove to herself that she can stretch those muscles than as a display of respect. But she is a politician; she can strategize; and she knows how it will appear to Yoda. So perhaps a message is sent, after all.

"You have lost everything," Padme says. She is not without sympathy. "For all we know, you and Obi-wan are the last of the Jedi. Where will you go? What will you do?" She cares; and also, if Luke or Leia need a teacher, she wants to know where Yoda is. He is powerful with the Force, even if she's had plenty of reasons to see how fallible Jedi can be. He is a useful ally. You don't throw those away if you don't have to.

"It is custom," Yoda says, "for Jedi to seek reclusion in times like these. Pragmatic, as well. For any sign of Force users, the Emperor will seek." His eyes flick up to hers. "Kind the Force is not, to those its chosen love."

Padme swallows past the hard knot in her throat. "But I'm alive," she says quietly. "And I have two beautiful children." The Force has not been kind, but it has not been unmerciful. She lost Anakin. She has not lost herself. Yet.

Yoda nods, but his face is hard. "Think not of the Force as something human," he says. "It is not..sentient. Not tied to life, or desire, or logic. It simply is. It will answer a force user's call; and in return, it will ask much."

She thinks through what he is saying and tries to understand. "I thought it was more spiritual than that," she says. Yoda chuckles darkly.

"Yes," he says. "And no. Both physical and spiritual, is it. Long have the Jedi taught that all to do to understand the Force was listen; but more and more I find that there are corners untouched and depths unplunged. Someday, escape this flesh, I will, and then the true journey begins." He sighs. "Lucky, the ones are who have already gone. They are one with the Force." He seems almost blissful in his conceptualization of it.

Padme blinks. "Master Yoda," she begins, and stops. For once in her life, she does not know what to say. "Are you saying that when we die, we become the Force?" It's difficult to wrap her mind around. "Do we stop being us?"

"Does an atom stop being itself because it is part of a whole?" Yoda asks mildly, still a teacher.

"No," Padme says. "But it is not distinguishable from the whole, either." She cannot find it in her to think of Anakin that way - so indistinct, so unremarkable.

"In the Force is true communion," Yoda says. "Harmony, and peace. Knowledge, and serenity. Existence without strife." It is as if, to him, this would be the best possible outcome. After so many years of war, Padme can't deny that it sounds inviting. But it also sounds stagnant.

She pauses. "Conflict is necessary for the exchange of ideas," she says. She is a politician, and a diplomat, but above all she is a servant of the people. "Growth is impossible without dialogue. What is personhood without change?"

"The Jedi had not changed their stance on anything of importance for the last two hundred years before Anakin Skywalker came to Coruscant," Yoda says. "We lived, we died, and we were at peace. But not so good at bringing peace, hmm?"

"As good as the Senate was at bridging divides," Padme can acknowledge. Politics had not proven to be anything like what she had expected it to be. Nothing, so far, had. "And now the galaxy will be either in chaos or in strictly regimented terror." She looks at Yoda with something like dread. "We weren't adequate to the situation. We were manipulated, and no one saw it coming. What could we have done to stop this?" She is halfway to panic by means of anger. "What can we do, to stop it now?"

"...I do not know," Yoda says, finally, heavily. "But to the things of this life, it does not do to be too attached. We are transient creatures, full of light and dust. Inevitable, death is. So what matters it?"

Padme stares at him. He does not look at her. Suddenly, the room feels too crowded, too close, and she cannot breathe, and it does not _matter_ to people like him. Her life and death is incidental. A thing of passing notice. How. How _dare he_.

"I think," Padme Amidala says, in case he had forgotten which of them was royalty, "that it would be best if you leave now. I need to rest."

Yoda inclines his head. "Be at peace, young Padme." He hops down from the table to leave.

The last she hears of him, he has taken a shuttle to Dagobah. She remembers it faintly as a swamp planet, filled with hostile and dangerous creatures, humming with the Force. Padme finds it in herself to hope he stays there, far away from her.

* * *

By the end of the week, a cargo ship from Alderaan comes with supplies, tradables, and her stock of baby clothes. Padme could weep. Bail had asked her sister to donate the spare clothes to a drive for refugees, and Sola had agreed. Padme dresses both Luke and Leia in green for new life and good luck. They would need it.

After some discussion, she and Obi-wan decide to set out for Mandalore. It was the last place that Ahsoka had been spotted, according to Bail. Both of them wanted to check in on her, even if there was no guarantee that she'd even be alive. And if they could get past the blockade, their supplies would sell for a very good price. After charting the course in the navigation system, they settled in for a long wait with the recordings Bail left in the ship's video archives.

Sola had done more than agree to donate baby clothes, Padme discovers. Bail told her the truth, and she posed as Padme's dead body for the quickest state funeral anyone had ever heard of in documented history. Emperor Palpatine said it was "out of respect for one of our most dedicated politicians, the closest to a daughter I've ever known in my years of public service. We have work to do, sentients of the galaxy, and she would not want us to waste our time with grieving."

"Well," Obi-wan says, bemused. "His grief didn't take him long to get over."

Padme finds herself shockingly, embarrassingly breaking down in something like hysterics. She is somewhere between laughter and tears, bitterness and choking. Obi-wan pats her back gently.

"We can stop if you like," he says. He's trying to be comforting, so she tries to calm herself. Jedi aren't good at emotions.

"No," she manages. "I can handle this. I just can't handle him. His. His unmitigated arrogance. The temerity of that blood-sucking Sithspawn. Kriff." She is so angry she can barely think. "I hate him. I hate him like I've never hated anyone before." She looks at Obi-wan, knowing her face is tear-stained. "I'm almost grateful Satine didn't live to see this."

It hits him like a blaster bolt. "She would be heartbroken," he says. "But I'd rather she was alive." Old pain lives in his face. She hates herself for bringing it up.

Padme takes a moment to collect herself, fundamentally disappointed with herself and her tactlessness. "I'm sorry," she says. "That was uncalled for." She stops. She regulates herself. "I miss her too."

Satine had been a good friend. She deserved to live. She'd just...never been capable of compromise. In the end, that was part of what had gotten her killed. Why they'd lost such an important ally. Padme can't quite forgive her for that, even though she's lost so many others, even though none of this is her fault. She had always looked up to her as an example of what a leader and reformer could be, but in the end she died like any other ruler, leaving Mandalore wartorn. She wished - she wished that Satine had lifted up a hand to defend herself before it was too late. Even if it wouldn't have changed anything. She wished that Satine would have _fought_. But none of these things are things she can say to Obi-wan.

He doesn't say anything. For a moment, she's worried that he'll never talk to her again, that she's alienated one of her few allies with anger and grief.

"I know I shouldn't," he begins, "but I miss Anakin, too. He was the better strategist of the two of us. He would know what to do. He…" He stops, something heartbroken in his voice. "He was like a brother to me." He looks at her, as if seeing Anakin, the one person they're both missing. "He was better than this." There is a real agony in him. He, like her, loved Anakin more than the Jedi Code said they should - and was loved in return. Loving Anakin was like loving a firestorm - wild, kinetic, beautiful. Devastating.

"He thought he was protecting me," Padme says, because he needs another reason to hate her. More importantly, he needs validation, like she does, that Anakin was someone who could be loved, who could love in return. "He was...always capable of violence, when it came to protecting the people he loved." She has thought this over and over and over, and it is something she cannot escape. Force protect him, the man had no common sense.

Obi-wan doesn't say a word, but his silence, she thinks, means that he agrees. When Anakin had killed a village of Tusken Raiders, she'd...well. She knew what Jedi were. Defenders of the peace with swords that could cut through metal. There were so many old legends of Jedi cutting through armies like a swimmer through water, clear and crisp. It wasn't right, but it wasn't illegal, either - and there were so many reports of Tusken Raider atrocities - she'd made her excuses, to not have to talk to him about it.

Satine would never have approved. Padme supposes that that's why she'd never talked to her about it, either. She'd certainly had enough to say about the war's brutality and senselessness, and the enforced servitude of sentients, and...well. She had a habit of being morally superior. She had a habit of being morally indignant. The two qualities made her an excellent speaker and person, but a hard politician to work with unless you liked burning slabin-filled tea cartels to the ground.

"There were warning signs with Anakin," Obi-wan says. "But I always trusted him. He meant well. His fear made him smarter. He was so reckless, I thought that it made him brave. I was wrong."

"This war," Padme says wearily. "It drained all of us. It made us stupid and slow. It distracted us from what was really going on." She leans back and stares at the ceiling. Nearby, Luke gurgles. "I guess it's not much of a shock that it was orchestrated by two Sith Lords." She feels sick. So much waste, and for what? Power?

"No," says Obi-wan thoughtfully. "I suppose it isn't. They must have been planning this for the last twenty years."

Padme evaluates this. "I want alcohol," she says. "If I'm going to watch my own funeral, I need to at least be tipsy. I'm not drunk enough, Obi-wan. I haven't been able to get drunk for the last eight months." Eight months of expectation, hope in the midst of chaos, clinging to the frail promise of a better tomorrow. She's made timelier decisions, but she doesn't regret this one. Still: she needs alcohol.

"What does my lady require?" Obi-wan inquires, as if he is a lord and she isn't dead and this is Naboo, where courtliness is demanded. As if this is funny, or normal, or a million things that it isn't. But pretending is...it's nice, so she plays along.

"Your lady," Padme says archly, "requires a Corellian brandy."

Obi-wan makes a face. "That's a bit strong for tipsy."

"That depends entirely on how you drink it," Padme informs him. He shrugs and pulls it out, grabbing a rather pedestrian lum for himself. Corellian brandy is, technically, illegal in most planetary systems; but on the other hand, this is no planetary system. She'll sip at it for the rest of the night and drink only enough to get her where she wants to be, which is not thinking too hard about things she doesn't want to think about. She can honestly say that that would be a relief.

The rest of the recording is much as Padme would have expected it - ornate, stately, and dignified. Friends and enemies alike say kind things about her. Jar Jar is characteristically unsubtle and awkward. Her replacement, Senator Dooje, compliments her loyalty and steadiness of purpose. She wonders if those are their words, or Palpatine's. She is itching to get her hands on the new Senate guidelines that Palpatine must have published to instill so much fear. She'll have to wait until she can set up a secure relay with Bail.

Sola looks more like her than she would have thought - it was the hologram, she thinks, overlaying her features with Padme's. She holds a facsimile of the japor snippet that Anakin gave Padme, except the design is slightly wrong. It's unlikely that anyone would notice unless they were looking for it. She has the original with her.

Padme is still cradling the brandy when her parents come out on stage. It's immediately clear that they hadn't been clued in on her not-death. Padme can see the strategy - their grief sells her funeral, her loss, their tragedy. Their words leave her in tears. Obi-wan, Jedi and parentless, does not know what to say to her. She doesn't ask him to say anything at all. She hopes that they are told the truth eventually; but they deserve to live out their years in security. She has the sinking feeling that she can't be anything more than a ghost to them now.

The ceremony ends with an beautiful salute by the Theed Royal Orchestra. It's new, composed personally for her death. Oma Lill, its composer, was a dear friend. She does not know if she will speak to him ever again. Her regal theme intertwines with a sadder melody, and motifs borrowed from the official Naboo anthem, and even the old Republic theme. Her heart breaks. She is sobbing like a child, like she has been all through this ordeal - but this time it is healing. For the first time during this recording, it does not feel like she is burying herself. She is burying her past. She is burying the Republic. She is burying dreams, so that she can purchase new ones.

The symphony ends by calling back to the classic theme of Queen Zai Anarore, said to have died valiantly against intruders. Her spirit still haunts the palace, or so the palace staff have it. Padme has never seen her herself, but she has dreamed of her in flashes that could be one thing or could be another. She's never taken legends lightly. The theme is almost entirely hopeful. It is everything Padme could have asked to have. Even Obi-wan seems touched.

"Your people love you," he says: a man without a people, a Jedi without an Order.

"And I love them," Padme says decisively. "I'll go back, someday. I'll tell the truth. When Luke and Leia are older." When saying the truth won't get them killed, she thinks, or kidnapped by a Sith Lord. When they can fight back.

Obi-wan nods. "I'll drink to that," he says, and does.

The holo-display turns to the menu. Padme grabs the remote and flips to the downloaded Naboo news. One headline catches her eye, and she brings it up. She stares, horrified.

"Oma Lill died in a freak explosion," Obi-wan reads aloud. He wrinkles his nose. "I didn't think that freak explosions were all that common on Naboo aircraft."

"They're not," Padme says. "Not unless you purposefully turn off all the security measures and disable the escape pods. Oma was murdered." She is - beyond horrified. They haven't had a private casualty in Naboo aircraft for the last twenty years. This is -

"Whoever did it wanted Naboo to know that he was murdered," Obi-wan says gravely. "I don't think they liked your symphony, Padme."

Her mind is racing faster than she can properly keep up with. "Palpatine did this," she says. "Or one of his stooges. He can't - he won't tolerate any insubordination." She can see it all so clearly now. "He wants everyone afraid of what he will do so they don't ask any questions." She knows it without knowing. It's a pattern. It's his technique. It's - "How did none of us see it before?"

"We were desperate," Obi-wan says. "And he was powerful and persuasive. Don't be mad at yourself for being deceived when all of us were, even the all-powerful Jedi." His moustache wrinkles with sarcasm. He is as disillusioned as she is, Padme realizes, even if it's not enough to turn his pragmatic idealism cynical.

"It was my job to see through him," Padme says. She has to make him understand how much she has failed. "It was my job to see what he was. It was my job to distrust him."

"You were thirteen the first time you met him," Obi-wan says, even more gently if possible. "Even Yoda was fooled. This is not something you can blame yourself for, Padme."

"If not me then who?" she demands. "I was the one who called for his Chancellorship, I was the one who was Queen while he was Senator, I was the one who worked with him day in and day out. It was my responsibility." She is crying again, she realizes, but more out of fury than out of sadness. "I failed my people. I failed my children. I failed Anakin. I-" _I failed myself_ , she wants to say, but she cannot get the words out. She cannot make herself say it.

"You, and every other member of the Senate," Obi-wan says. "You, and all the Jedi. Everyone who doubted Palpatine's facade disappeared, Padme. Being fooled is the reason that you're alive." He looks as though this realization were a heavy burden he has been carrying for years.

It's a harsh truth that puts much into perspective. "I...can accept that," Padme says. "But I can't be happy with it." She refuses to. She can't think that her life is worth so much suffering when she could have, should have, stopped it.

"I've put a lot of thought to it," Obi-wan says, sounding weary but firm. "I think that we were in a no-win situation. Palpatine deliberately engineered it so that we would have limited choices, and made it so that his way was the only solution. We were frantic and he profited off of it. He is a master manipulator. We were unprepared."

Padme counts to ten, controlling her breathing, posture and emotions. "That will not happen again," she says.

"No," Obi-wan says with shared determination. "It won't."

She's still a little drunk, but that was always the best time to begin drafting papers. She grabs a log pad and starts making a list of incidents to research and proof to gather. Obi-wan adds contributions. They'll see justice return to the galaxy, one way or another.

* * *

Author's Note

Sar Notori Spere is for both the fantastic notbecauseofvictories, whose Bail tag I am borrowing here, and the amazing Shakespeare.

There's also an Emily Dickinson quote in here, if you can catch it slant.


End file.
